Second ObamaCare contractor facility doing nothing — and still hiring

posted at 10:41 am on May 20, 2014 by Ed Morrissey

Last week, whistleblowers in Missouri alerted local media that an ObamaCare facilitator with a $1.2 billion contract paid its employees to do almost nothing … literally. Serco’s paper-application facility in Missouri had so little business that employees had to sit at their desks and entertain themselves most of the day, and the goal set by Serco management had employees aiming at processing just one or two applications a month. Because employees are forbidden from bringing in their own computers or smart phones, they ended up playing Pictionary and socializing most of their day.

A second local TV station in Arkansas wondered if the local Serco office had the same problem. Not only did employees make the same allegations, the office is still hiring even more employees to do nothing:

Now that employee said Serco is offering employees an opportunity to work overtime this weekend.

When asked why, the employee was told to catch up.

On what? Sleep?

KMOV unlocks part of the mystery of this story. Serco’s contract with CMS requires a particular level of staffing regardless of the work coming into the facility. If Serco falls below that — presumably measured in man-hours on duty — they can lose their $1.2 billion contract. The OT may well be in play because Serco has trouble getting people to get stuck for eight hours at a stretch with nothing to do, a situation that sounds pleasant until it’s experienced first-hand. (I have had this experience at two different jobs for relatively brief periods, and can attest to the torturous boredom it generates.)

This demonstrates the folly of top-down government control of a market-based industry. No insurance carrier would waste money like this for more than a week or two before shedding jobs and rescaling the effort. Anyone who expected that government control would make this process more efficient should have their heads examined … or better yet, voted out of office.

Gummint ‘contracting’ at its best. I submit that this company hire nothing but newly gradjupated collegians. Their brains have already been sucked from their noggins and they have been indoctrinated into the ways of Obamanomics. Sitting around sucking their thumbs will just a continuance of their last 4-12 years.

I applied for a job but the requirements were just too stiff for me. They said I couldn’t watch porn and that I’d actually have to hit the refresh key every 10 minutes. Too much stress so I’m just going to apply for a grant to study the effect of man made global climate change on the sex life of the cane toad.

This is how Communism used to work. We have the lack of freedom of speech and the fear of losing your job if you speak up. We have the lack of real democracy and the easy of unaccountable officials setting the popular will aside. And we have the phoney baloney jobs that only exist for bureaucratic and political reasons.

No insurance carrier would waste STEAL money like this for more than a week or two before shedding jobs and rescaling the effort. Anyone who expected that government control would make this THEFT process more efficient should have their heads examined … or better yet, voted out of office THROWN IN JAIL

Jobs created by government activity are always a net drag on the larger economy. Government is like money launderers. Every dollar they touch, gets a bit smaller. Transaction fees are inherently decelerating.

If Serco falls below that — presumably measured in man-hours on duty — they can lose their $1.2 billion contract. The OT may well be in play because Serco has trouble getting people to get stuck for eight hours at a stretch with nothing to do, a situation that sounds pleasant until it’s experienced first-hand.

Don’t kid yourself, Ed. If Serco employees have no real work to do on Obamacare, they will be asked to stuff envelopes asking for campaign contributions for Democrat Senate candidates in neighboring states, like Arkansas and Iowa.

Kind of reminds me of my days in the Air Force at Wright-Patterson AFB many years ago. Every day near the end of the fiscal year we would order a bunch of supplies so next year’s supply budget wouldn’t be cut. One group purchased a printing press that never was uncrated … you have to order billions of paper clips to equal a printing press.

My best friend works at the Rogers office. I gave her some portable exercise equipment to keep her from going crazy. She’s since lost 14lbs. She says now she can always count on seeing various hand weights popping up all over the cube farm. People doing chair squats. Hilarious.